They listened, Julie seemingly intent, and Peter, who soon gave up the attempt to recognise the piece, glanced sideways at the couple on the lounge. They did not notice him. He took them both in and caught--he could not help it--a few words. She was thirty-five, he guessed, slightly made-up, but handsome and full figured, a woman of whom any man might have been proud. He was an officer, in Major's uniform, and he was smoking a cigarette impatiently and staring down the lounge. She, on the other hand, had her eyes fixed on him as if to read every expression on his face, which was heavy and sullen and mutinous. "Is that final, then, George?" she said. "I tell you I can't help it; I promised I'd dine with Carstairs to-night." A look swept across her face. Peter could not altogether read it. It was not merely anger, or pique, or disappointment; it certainly was not merely grief. There was all that in it, but there was more. And she said--he only just caught the sentence of any of their words, but there was the world of bitter meaning in it: "Quite alone, I suppose? And there will be no necessity for me to sit up?" "Peter," said Julie suddenly, "the tea's cold. Take me upstairs, will you? we can have better sent up." He turned to her in surprise, and then saw that she too had heard and seen. "Right, dear," he said, "It is beastly stuff. I think, after all, I'd prefer a spot, and I believe you would too." He rose carefully, not looking towards the lounge, like a man; and Julie got up too, glancing at that other couple with such an ordinary merely interested look that Peter smiled to himself to see it. They threaded their way in necessary silence through the tables and chairs to the doors, and said hardly a word in the lift. But in their sitting-room, cosy as ever, Julie turned to him in a passion of emotion such as he had scarcely dreamed could exist even in her. "Oh, you darling," she said, "pick me up, and sit me in that chair on your knee. Love me, Peter, love me as you've never loved me before. Hold me tight, tight, Peter hurt me, kiss me, love me, say you love me..." and she choked her own utterance, and buried her face on his shoulder, straining her body to his, twining her slim foot and leg round his ankle. In a moment she was up again, however, and glanced at the clock. "Peter, we must dress early and dine early, mustn't we? The thing begins at seven-forty-five. Now I know what we'll do. First, give me a drink, a long one, Solomon, and take one yourself. Thanks. That'll do. Here's the best.... Oh, that's good, Peter. Can't you feel it running through you and electrifying you? Now, come"--she seized him by the arm--"come on! I'll tell you what you've got to do." Smiling, though a little astonished at this outburst, Peter allowed himself to be pulled into the bedroom. She sat down on the bed and pushed out a foot. "Take it off, you darling, while I take down my hair," she said.